Justice Minister Peter MacKay takes questions a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 4, 2014. The Conservative government has introduced legislation to criminalize the purchase of sexual services.

It is troubling to see the debate over Canada’s proposed prostitution law framed as a battle of progressives and feminists against evangelical Christians and social conservatives or as a choice between decriminalization and the so-called Nordic model.

Why? Because it’s not either of those things.

The Canadian bill is loosely based on Sweden’s Violence Against Women Act, which was largely written by UBC law graduate Gunilla Ekberg and passed in 1999.

The Swedish act is the basis for similar legislation in Norway, Iceland and France.

In February, the European Parliament also passed a non-binding resolution urging member states to adopt the Nordic model.

The resolution described prostitution and its exploitation as “human rights violations contrary to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights” and barriers to the equality of women and men.

An earlier report to the European Parliament said the issue is “at the intersection of culture, power and difference.”

It is at that crossroads — facing questions of gender inequality, freedom of expression and association, exploitation, human trafficking, poverty and racism — that Canada found itself when sections of the prostitution law were struck down last year.

In the debate that erupted after the initial Ontario court decision, dozens of women’s groups, feminists, human rights activists and others found themselves in a somewhat uneasy alliance with evangelicals and conservatives.

The rallying point was support for the Nordic model, which criminalizes clients, but not prostitutes and offers substantial support to help them exit sex work.

Among the supporters of the Nordic model are: the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry, the Asian Women Coalition Against Ending Prostitution, the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, Action Ontarienne Contre la Violence Faite aux Femmes, the Elizabeth Fry Society, the Canadian Federation of University Women as well as Educating Voices, a group of former sex-trade workers.

Fundamental to any consideration of how to deal with prostitution is the question of choice.

While proponents of decriminalization differ from the others in their belief that selling sexual services can be a choice freely made without coercion and push-factors such as poverty or addiction, supporters of the Nordic model disagree.

NWAC, in particular, draws the causal relationship between aboriginal women being grossly overrepresented in prostitution and being among the most likely to be poor, badly housed, poorly educated and have difficulty finding jobs.

But this bill is not a copy of the Swedish law.

It takes some cues from it — most notably that criminalizing clients will kill demand.

But far from decriminalizing the sellers, this bill would broaden the criminalization of prostitutes.

Selling sex would be illegal anywhere that children might go, which could mean virtually any street other than those in industrial areas.

The effect may be to drive prostitution off the streets, out of neighbourhoods and out of sight. But it will also force some street prostitutes into areas where they are more likely to be at risk of harm. And, ironically, it may push some indoors, which is exactly what proponents of decriminalization have lobbied for.

The made-in-Canada solution also falls far short of the social, economic and educational supports that are part of the Nordic model.

Although Justice Minister Peter MacKay announced $20 million to support services for prostitutes exiting the sex trade such as housing, addictions treatment, education and retraining, a portion of that money will be used for increased policing costs. How much will go to policing isn’t clear.

Yet even if all of that money went to support services, it’s far short of what’s paid in Nordic-model countries for specific services. And, it bears noting, Canada already lags those countries in support for post-secondary education, training and child care.

MacKay followed the Conservatives’ favoured approach of increased fines and longer, mandatory sentences to dampen demand.

The unexpected change was the provision that would outlaw all advertising of sexual services including exotic dancing, escort services and non-therapeutic massages.

It would also give police broad powers to search for and seize advertising material, allowing them to raid escort services and massage parlours that now operate openly.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision overturning key sections of the prostitution law last December handed the government an opportunity.

The new law, which must be enacted by Dec. 22, could have made a substantive difference by fully decriminalizing those involved in the inherently risky business of selling sex.

The government could have used that new law as an impetus to address the inequalities that push some — if not most — women and men into prostitution.

And, at very least, the Conservatives could have moved beyond the centuries’ old view that the sex trade is a nuisance best kept out of sight and out of mind.

Amendments to the bill are still possible.

But without them, the government will have failed to address the one thing that both opponents and proponents of the Nordic model wanted most: A law that would reduce the risk of harm.

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